Ratings for SPEED's The Car Show with Adam Carolla and the second season of History's Top Gear USA show the latter with an audience of approximately 2.0 million viewers, compared to just 249,000 for the former.

It's difficult to make a fair comparison between TGUSA and The Car Show given History is one of the most basic of basic cable networks and SPEED is a network that, if it's even carried, is likely to be slotted between the Game Show Network and Retirement Living TV in the triple-digit channels, but there are a few revelations in the numbers.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Last year, TGUSA premiered at 1.9 million viewers after large promotional efforts, which was good enough to earn a second season. This year's new style, which drops the British intro and look for a more American feel, managed to pick up another 100,000 viewers for the premiere with 1.6 million in the 18-54 male demographic.

The numbers for The Car Show aren't large enough to crack into the Top 100 rankings so we're relying on what we've heard and what those connected to the show have said. For its premiere, Adam Carolla's new project took 249,000 viewers, with 87,000 men between 25-54.

Most significantly, The Car Show only registered an increase of 5% in they key demographic of males between 25-54 when compared to Speed Makers, which was the show in the same slot on SPEED the week before.

The first promo video of The Car Show revealed a set clearly borrowed from Merv Griffin. Jalopnik…
Read more Read more

For TGUSA the goal is to see if they can keep a larger share of the audience than last year, which dropped to about 1.3 million after the first episode. For The Car Show it's to stop having their biggest sponsor react to the show's ratings by damming them with faint praise.